The Test Drive: Chhandomay on Sun Product Reviews

Wednesday Aug 19, 2009

IT
PRO's Dave Mitchell published an exclusive review
of the Sun Fire
X4275 server which he described as having "a
sharp focus on storage hungry applications such as multimedia, data
warehousing and video surveillance."

Dave
took a close look at the server's build and said the X4275 has a "very
tidy interior that is designed to make the most of the internal real
estate." He also noted "Sun
has the virtualization angle covered" with the motherboard offering
an internal USB port and a CompactFlash
card slot for booting an embedded hypervisor. He pointed out that "the
X4275 certainly has room to grow with demand," highlighting the
three riser cards in the back that offer a total of
six PCI-Express 2.0 slots.

Additionally,
Dave noted "the
X4275 doesn't go short in the network department as it has four
embedded Gigabit ports." He also reported that the X4275 was "reasonably
easy on the utility supply,"
when tested on an inline power meter, and pointed out that the server
comes with 1050W hot-plug supplies included in the price.

Dave
also called out the X4275's ILOM chip, and its secure web interface
which provides a status report on all critical components and their
condition. All in all, Dave was pleased with the build quality as
well as the solid three-year on-site warranty. He concluded by
saying: "The
X4275 puts forward a strong proposition as a storage server as it has
a high potential capacity and plenty of room to expand."

The reviewer began with a rundown of hardware design features and
system specifications. Specifically, he called out the two Xeon E5540
"Gainestown" CPUs with four physical cores each.

"With a Hyperthreading-aware OS,
though, it presents itself as capable
of handling 16 threads, resulting in a task manager likely to create a
bit of envy," he noted. Craig also highlighted the vast
configuration,
OS and service options available for the server.

Overall, Craig was quite pleased with the X4275. His verdict: "Sun
Microsystem's Sun Fire X4275 is an excellent
all-rounder that can be
custom-specced to suit most small-to-medium-business needs. Whether you
need to apply yourself with some dense storage or just need the compute
power of 16 cores, its
flexibility is commendable."